My desk...

Here's the mess I left at a corner of my desk... thinking of going back tomorrow (or rather, later today) is giving me that sinking feeling already. But it has to be done!
Back to the grind, I guess. Wish me luck... and goodnight!

Frustration

I've been trying to solve this mystery of a gene for such a long time. Now, after countless hours of experimenting, analysing the result is like opening pandora's box. OK, maybe not as bad as pandora, but you know what I meant. Arrgh! And there three weeks ago I thought I had the answer... Every step I take to answer a question, there seems to be more questions cropping up instead. now at closer inspection, I had missed something and found something else and thus can't explain what I am seeing.

Needless to say, at 7pm on a Monday... I'm stuck with my work.

Papers are strewn all over my desk and I think I'm gonna leave it like that.
I'm just gonna go home now.

:(

Influences

So most of you would have read that Michael Crichton passed away about 2 weeks ago. It was kind of a surprise to me, as I didn't know he had been battling with the big C.
I grew up reading Crichton books and watching his films. And I have to confess that I probably was influenced by this writer and his stories to go into science when I was younger. In fact, looking back in my photo library, here I found one of my first mosquito collection, and guess where have I propped my test tubes on for a photo?





In fact, does this picture look familiar?



Sigh, the memories...

In between experiments: LaTeX

Okay, I honestly don't know which number this "in between experiments" post is... anyway...

So while I have a little time at work, i.e. waiting for experiment to finish, I thought about how I would be writing my thesis.

I like so many other peoples, have been using Microsoft Word (Mac version) to do my writings. But I just hated how this software seem to have a mind of it's own. Many times would it auto-correct, auto-space, auto-misaligneverythingbecauseyouputafigure, auto-whateverelseformatyoudidn'twanti&thatstupidrobotwindowwavingatyou and classically, crash, when too much writing is going on. Also in science, writing a paper/thesis requires citation and bibliography. EndNotes seemed to be the popular choice here for Word. But it isn't free.

So off I went to find myself a way out of the tyranny of Microsoft, and I remembered someone mentioned LaTeX. Now LaTeX (pronounced Lah/Lay-Tech, apparently) is not a word processor, but a "documentation system for high quality type-setting". It requires some knowledge of typing commands to get it to do what you want your document to look like... pretty much like html. For the bibliography, LaTex version is also available, called BibTex and you can use an application like BibDesk to enter all your references pretty much like EndNote. So your document is pretty much looks like a command screen. But once you finish and convert it to pdf or dvi format, you'll see your end result. And I think it looks pretty good.

I still haven't got the hang of it yet, but I am seriously considering using LaTeX to write my thesis. Problem is, no one uses this in my lab, including my boss... so I wonder if he'll be willing to do any corrections of my paper by hand. Ok, not no one I know... I only know one other person who used this for thesis-writing (and thus was chuffed when learnt that I am attempting to do the same, and even gave me a tutorial to speed my way. Ah, bless!).

The moment we've been waiting.

It seems like the whole world was watching the USA.

"And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.
To those who would tear the world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you.
And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.
For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

-Barrack Hussein Obama II, president-elect of the USA.


Well done, America.

Laazzieee

Not that I'm the most hard working person in the world...

But my boss is possibly the laziest person I've met.
He emailed me from his office next door to have me go get the serial number of one broken PCR machine in our basement lab.
Can't he just go himself? He only sits in his office all day. He could do with the exercise.

Bleh!


What's a PCR machine?